


Let It All Out

by Sketchyfletch



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Comfort, F/F, Gen, One-Shot, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 18:06:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/701126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sketchyfletch/pseuds/Sketchyfletch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leliana learns that the past decade has wrought some changes in the girl she once knew in Lothering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let It All Out

It’s been a long time since Leliana observed anybody who was able to move like that under the weight of such heavy armour. Hawke cleaves through the mages in the Viscount’s room like a thunderstorm, dashing those unfortunate enough not to be instantly killed by her sword against the walls. Her companions assist and from a detached point of view, their collective skill is quite beautiful to watch. The Rivaini rogue’s blades catch the candlelight for a moment before they are submerged in a mage’s chest, ripping out in an arc of blood before she spins away from a bolt as gracefully as a dancer. The elven girl uses her stave as quarterstaff as well as conduit for her magic and Leliana feels the hair prickling on the back of her neck as the young woman sends lightning rippling through her opponent. The man in the white armour keeps more of a distance than the others, but his form with the bow is perfect. He never misses, something that takes exceptional skill in this whirling madness of magic and demons. 

Leliana hadn’t known when she arrived in Kirkwall that the Champion was Hawke. It hadn’t taken her long to find out. Hand of the Divine she might be now but that didn’t mean she spends any less time in taverns, soaking up stories. Quite the opposite, in fact. After all this time, she is still a bard. Her ear remains practiced in picking out the valuable kernels of information from the chaff of idle gossip. Hawke has risen from simple farming stock in Lothering to the second most important person in Kirkwall, but it’s clear that she hasn’t earned that title by sitting in meetings and being diplomatic with the nobles.

Leliana remembers a smiling girl a few years younger than herself, strong-armed in a ragged sleeveless tunic, with dirt under her fingernails, smiling warmly at her as her family pass the Chantry. There’s very little left of her to recognise in the woman currently ripping the mages to shreds. She’s focused and cold and brutal, and so efficient alongside her companions that by the time Leliana spots a moment to slip out of the shadows and dispatch the last two mages, those are the only two left. 

It’s been nearly ten years. But Hawke fixes her with a look and remembers her immediately. “Sister Nightingale. You look different without the robes.”

The archer is looking between them. “You know her, Hawke?”

The Rivaini is eyeing her closely too. She looks exceedingly familiar, enough that Leliana knows she’s seen her somewhere before, but the memory is some time in the past, far enough back that she doesn’t want to touch it. Much has happened between her departure from Lothering, not all of it good, before she found her way to the Divine’s court. 

“Do you just go by your surname now, Bronwyn?” Leliana thinks that would be a pity. She likes the Champion’s given name.

Bronwyn shrugs. “Hardly makes a difference one way or the other. It’s not as though there are any other Hawkes left to get confused with.” She sounds so bitter. Leliana tries to see the smiling girl she remembers and Bronwyn looks at her through brown eyes that have no light to them. Leliana’s brow creases. Leandra was not that much older that it should have been her time already. And what of the twins? Sweet Bethany, who was so nervous around the templars that Leliana suspected almost immediately what she might be – Carver, trying so hard to be the man of the house with his father gone, red-faced around women and staunchly willing to fight anybody who spoke one ill word of either of his sisters, as much as he grumbled about them? Surely not.

She meets Bronwyn’s eyes and sees the answer there. 

“What’re you doing here, Leliana?”

She composes herself and delivers her message. The Grand Cleric must leave. She resists the urge to tell Bronwyn to do the same. It’s not her place. Once the archer – addressed by Bronwyn as Sebastian – has run off to pass it on to Elthina, and the other two have been summarily dismissed, she steps towards the shadows. Time has not left the best mark on Bronwyn and it’s almost painful to see. She has to leave. 

“Leliana.” 

She turns back. “I need to go.”

“I want to talk to you.” Bronwyn’s voice carries the air of somebody who is used to being listened to. It has the desired effect, and Leliana pauses. 

“What do you need?”

“You were different from the other sisters in the Chantry, as I remember.” Leliana nods. That was no secret. It had not prevented the Hawke family, at least, from being kind to her. Learning of them what she did later on, it was hardly surprising. They were not an especially normal family either. “Maybe you can give me a useful answer to this.”

Leliana suspects she is not going to like the question. 

“A girl loses her home, and her younger brother, to darkspawn. She sees him being crushed to death in the grip of an ogre, pounded into the ground so hard that he doesn’t even look like him anymore, and then tossed away. She escapes the darkspawn and flees the country. In the new country she works her arse off to shore up her family and try to put together funds for an expedition, and just when it looks like she’s going to be home free with enough money to reinstate her family as folk who don’t have to steal or sell swords for a living, her sister gets tainted by darkspawn and dies in the Deep Roads, of all places. And then she moves on from that and she tries to keep on living, when her mother is kidnapped, butchered, and reanimated as a corpse by a sadistic blood mage. And all the while people are saying to her ‘Hawke, help me with this, Hawke, help me with that’ and expecting her to get nearly killed on their behalf because she’s supposed to be decent and heroic and expecting her to have an opinion on mages and templars and qunari when she just wants to be left alone to mourn properly, which she can’t even seem to do anymore. And now, despite doing her best to stay out of it, she might end up getting involved in a quarrel that brings an Exalted March down on the whole city. So my question is, why? What is the purpose behind all this?” Her jaw is clenched. She looks like she wants to punch something. “Why me?”

The story Hawke tells shakes Leliana to the core, and it is a long time before she thinks of moving. She steps away from the shadows, and takes a tentative step towards her. She remembers doing something similar for another woman, long ago, when that one had seemed ready to collapse under her burden too. But that had been different. She had known the Warden as a friend. She might have known Hawke once, but this woman has been battered and broken and re-forged into someone Leliana doesn’t know.

“I can’t answer that,” she admits, softly. “I hope there is an answer. But I remember asking myself a similar question, years ago, before I came to Lothering. I cannot claim a quarter of your suffering, Bronwyn, but I do know what it is like to feel like the world has turned against you.” 

Her tone seems to disarm Bronwyn a little. The Champion looks at her feet. “I know I should be grateful.” Her voice is shaking. “I’m not poor. I have friends. But it hurts so much and it never seems to stop. And everyone seems to expect me to get over it because I’m the Champion.” 

Leliana reaches her and lifts a hand to touch the other woman’s cheek. The gesture is reflexive, as is the expectation that Hawke will bat her hand away.

Instead, armoured arms wrap around her and Hawke buries her face in her shoulder. Her grasp is strong, unbelievably so, and Leliana experiences a brief moment of wondering whether she has fallen through a gap in the Veil. She is standing in the Viscount’s throne room at midnight and a woman she has not seen in nearly a decade is clutching her like a lifeline. Leliana knows it’s not really her Bronwyn is holding, it’s the connection to the past she presents, the fact that she is the last thread which connects Bronwyn to her origins. And that she’s holding on so desperately to it makes Leliana’s throat tighten, a little, and she wraps one arm around Bronwyn’s waist, the other combing through the woman’s hair, and she hums to her. It’s a Fereldan song of farmers in the springtime and home. It was a favourite, in Lothering.

And as she hoped, it seems to unblock the dam that Bronwyn has built between herself and pain not properly healed from, but shut away and allowed to fester.. The woman sags and falls to her knees, taking Leliana with her, and sobs into her shoulder. It’s not soft weeping. It’s the wracking, hitching, gulping crying of a person who is beyond comforting, who doesn’t need to be soothed but to be allowed to let the grief pour out of her until at last, the pain is eased.

They are there for some time, sitting slumped amongst the corpses of the mages. Bronwyn’s sword lies forgotten on the floor. Between that and the weight of the armour, it’s clear that she’s become much stronger since she left Lothering. Outwardly, at least.

Bronwyn has stopped crying by the time Leliana speaks again. “I need to go. I’m sorry.”

Bronwyn stands as well, and looks away, palming the water from her cheeks. “Yeah.” Her voice is rough. “I’ll talk to Elthina. Try to get her to leave.”

Leliana nods. “And try to use your money to get away from Kirkwall while you can,” she advises, gently. “I fear that this city is becoming a bear trap. A little pressure and it will snap. I do not wish to hear that you are between the teeth when it does.”

Bronwyn looks away. “The people will expect their Champion to be there. I never asked for this title but I won’t save my own skin if it means other people die in my place.” 

“You’re a good person, Bronwyn.” The warrior looks back at her, eyebrows raised.

“I’m more used to ‘ruthless’ as my description these days.”

“Perhaps. But also good. Take care of yourself and your companions, Bronwyn. If they offer support, don’t feel it’s a sign of weakness to take it.”

Bronwyn makes a noise of assent, and Leliana steps back into the shadows. The warrior stands in the middle of the room for the moment, looking down at the corpses surrounding her. Leliana watches the other woman silently. After a few moments Bronwyn picks up her sword, squares her shoulders and walks out. Leliana walks out behind her, silent in the dark corridor. She slips out through the nearest open window and takes the rooftop route back to the inn where she is staying and masquerading as a minstrel. She does not plan to perform tonight, however. It is late, and she wants to retreat to her room, and look up at the ceiling, and think. 

It is a quiet night by Kirkwall’s standards, and she hopes it will stay that way for a while, for Bronwyn’s sake.


End file.
